


Collision Course

by HenryMercury



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Past Ty Lee/Azula
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4517955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's mortifying enough that Azula has been forced to move to a less expensive, less prestigious school. </p><p>Then along comes the uncouth little blind girl who keeps groping her and pretending it's an accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collision Course

Azula has never wanted to be anywhere less.

Well, no, that's not quite right—there was the time on Ember Island with Li, Lo and their respective bathing suits. There had been _photographers_. Azula had been in the same photographs as her former nannies' breasts sagging down their loose-skinned torsos as if they were congealed masses of something, just as likely to keep sliding until they flopped onto the floor.

That the rest of Azula's schooling will be comparable to that horror is... well, she doesn't want to think about that. She has done nothing to deserve this indignity.

"Honey," Mother had said during the car ride here, patient in that patronising way that Azula has always despised, "you'll still be at one of the top schools in the country."

" _One of_. The Royal Fire Academy for Girls is _the_ top school. I belong there. I deserve to be there."

"I know, sweetie, but we just can't afford it anymore. Ever since your father—"

"I'm well aware of what Dad did," Azula had snapped, just as she had done in every previous performance of the same argument. "It's just completely unfair that _I_ have to suffer for it."

And Azula is suffering indeed, as she stands at the school gates, looking disdainfully in at the modest hedged gardens that line the entranceway. School hours officially begin in just three minutes and, being the perfect student, she is never late.

The problem is that in order to be punctual, she has to accept her damnation and step inside.

She is far enough back from the gate that the stream of students pushing inside only bustle irritatingly around her, rather than actually pushing her anywhere along with them. Azula looks at her watch again—the several thousand dollar watch that had been given to her as a twelfth birthday gift by her father. She remembers the doll Uncle had given her for that same birthday, as though any girl still played with those at twelve, and as though Azula had ever done so. The memory of destroying the doll is still conjured whenever she smells burning wood or plastic.

It's just as well no-one took any pictures of that incident, because she can now imagine the headlines: _Like Father Like Daughter! Daughter of Disgraced CEO of Ozai Enterprises shares her father's pyromaniac tendencies—_

Something hard and cold smacks the side of her knee sharply. Azula winces and turns to discover the source of the blow just in time to collect another student with the whole front of her body. The girl, whose face is mostly obscured by a fringe of black hair, is almost a head shorter than Azula. The result is that her nose buries itself rather intimately in the sensitive skin of Azula's neck. The girl's hands, in their attempts to grapple for a source of stability, have attached themselves to Azula's breasts, the small palms pressing down almost painfully into the soft tissue.

"Watch where you're going!" Azula snaps, trying to shove the girl away. As she steps back, Azula sees the object that caused the initial blow to her leg—a white cane tipped with red.

"No can do, Princess," the girl says. Her tone is indignant, rude.

"Then learn to use that cane, instead of simply slamming it into unsuspecting pedestrians," Azula replies, no more civil. She is in no mood to care that the girl is blind. Everyone has their own problems; Azula has not been cut any slack when it comes to her own.

"You talk to all blind people like that?" the girl asks.

"I talk like that to anyone who tries to walk right over the top of me."

"You're not a very considerate person, are you?"

"Toph!" A man's voice, full of breathless worry, calls out from behind the blind girl.

The girl sighs heavily, visibly lowers her shoulders, and turns around. "I'm fine, Dad! This kind girl offered to walk me to my class, so you don't even have to come in today."

It takes Azula a moment to realise that she is the one the girl, Toph, is talking about. Lying right through her teeth about, more accurately.

"What are you playing at?" she asks, low enough that Toph's father cannot hear her contradicting his daughter, but venomous enough that Toph should gather an impression of who she's messing with.

"Are you sure, Toph?" the father says, stopping now that he has caught up with his daughter. Perhaps she was running to get away from him when she crashed into Azula.

"Yes, Dad. I've been here for two years already; I know this place quite well. I've got one person to help me around. That's enough to make it to class."

Azula listens with interest as Toph speaks to her father in an entirely different voice than she had used when arguing with Azula. Now, she sounds polite, meek, fragile. Whatever deception she has employed works, because her father does (reluctantly) leave.

Azula looks at her watch again. There is only one minute left until the bell should sound.

A small hand with a surprising grip fastens itself around her forearm.

"You don't seriously want me to walk you to your class, do you?" Azula asks irritably. "For one thing, I don't have time. I have my own classes to attend. For another, this is my first day here. Any other hapless victim would have been a more experienced guide."

"Like I actually care," says Toph. "I just needed to get away from Dad. But since I seem to be annoying you a whole lot, I've decided not to let you go just yet."

"You're a pest," Azula hisses.

Toph blows air out the side of her mouth to ruffle her fringe. The hair looks slightly greasy, like fingers have been combed through it too many times since it was last brushed. Azula wonders how Toph eats without making a horrible mess of it. Wonders _if._

"Doesn't that hair irritate you? It's certainly irritating me."

"Do I look to you like the kind of person who gives a shit about looking one way or another?" the blind girl responds, with a snort that's positively grotesque.

"No," admits Azula. Perhaps that is the very reason behind the hairstyle. It can't be laziness if she has the kind of parents who would have her hair done for her every day. She must have chosen it as a statement.

"Damn right. You, on the other hand... I bet you brush your hair really carefully every morning. Maybe even braid it. And you wear lipstick."

"Two out of three," Azula answers, amused by the guessing game. Silly distractions are better than dwelling on her current problems. "I dislike the feeling of braids—and even if that weren't the case, they slide right out of my hair."

"What colour's the lipstick, then?" Toph asks.

Azula frowns to herself. "What difference does it make to you?"

"My money's on bright pink."

"It's more of a red."

"Heh, just as I thought. But they're still gonna tell you to take it off."

What Toph thinks she has deduced from this Azula doesn't get around to asking, because at that moment one of the blind girl's feet clips a loose cobblestone in the path (and Azula resents that she is in a place with loose cobblestones in its paths) and she stumbles. Oddly, her trajectory is more sideways that forwards. She ends up mashed up against Azula, face pressed up into her throat, hands once again squarely on her breasts. The hands do not move away until they have given the soft area an unmistakeably deliberate squeeze.

Azula shoves her away, remembering too late that despite her brashness, her groper is in fact visually impaired. She shoots out an arm to grab Toph before she topples all the way over.

"You are— you're a _menace_ ," she accuses.

Immediately, the blind girl is the picture of innocence and confusion. The kind of helplessness that people might assume comes with a lack of vision—including her parents, based on what Azula witnessed back at the gate. Azula too might be convinced by it if Toph wasn't smirking beneath the dark flap of hair that falls over her face.

"Does anyone actually buy your act, then, Toph?" she asks.

Toph just shrugs, like she's surprised anyone does.

"Most of the time I don't _have_ to act," she says, bitterness replacing her humour. "People think being able to see means they get to know the world as it really is. They think that, and then they ignore what's really there and go on believing in exactly what they've made up in their own heads."

Her sudden earnestness catches Azula off guard. She doesn't usually care for this kind of thing—usually, she would ridicule anyone stupid enough to try and discuss feelings with her—but there's a chronic frustration in Toph's complaint that resonates at an odd level within her. Azula, who has been under the gaze of the public across the entire world, knows a thing or two about being unseen despite all the scrutiny.

"What's your name, anyway, Princess?"

"I'm Azula. And why do you insist on calling me Princess?"

"You just sound prissy and sour, is all. Azula, huh? Unusual name. Same name as the daughter of that crazy businessman who ordered hits on a whole bunch of his competitors. Unless of course that's because you _are_ the daughter of that cr—"

"For heaven's sake, keep your voice down."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was that a secret? I hate to break it to you, Princess Azula, but I've heard you're pretty recognisable. You know, to anyone who's ever seen a tabloid page or a TV news program. Which I'd say is everybody in this school but me."

She's right, but that doesn't mean Azula will let her win. After all, if she learned anything from her father it was that winning has nothing to do with how right you are.

"You know what else I heard?" Toph goes on.

Azula rolls her eyes, then informs the blind girl that she has done so.

" _I heard_ that you look real good in a pair of hotpants. Something about a beach photoshoot—"

"—it was definitely not a photoshoot. They were papparazzi shots—"

"—and I already know you've got a killer rack, so."

Azula chooses smugness over outrage, because outrage has proven itself mostly ineffective against Toph's stubborn hide. "Well at least there's _some_ truth to the rumours about me, then," she says.

"Good to know," Toph says, and winks the clumsy wink of someone who has been told about winking but never actually seen the gesture executed. The small movement is lewd nonetheless. "So, Princess Hotpants, what room are you heading to for roll call? I can be your guide."

"Isn't it usually the blind who have guides?" Azula says flippantly.

Toph laughs. "You're just a scream, Hotpants," she says, and accidentally-on-purpose gropes Azula's chest one last time before finally latching onto her arm and pulling her along.

Azula reaches the room she's been allotted for roll call just as the teacher unlocks the door and the students begin filing in. She is too distracted by thoughts of her bizarre new acquaintance to dwell properly on her hatred even for the rickety desk she seats herself at.

 

*

 

Azula has no desire to sit in the cafeteria, where the air is too warm and too laden with the stink of inferior school meals. She takes the lunch that Mother packed for her and walks around the grounds in search of an appropriate place. There's a grassy area, in the very centre of which sits a lone figure. Azula recognises Toph right away.

"Why are you sitting here?" she asks once she gets close enough.

"Felt like it," Toph answers, and slurps in a large mouthful of noodles from her lunchbox. "What are you doing here, Hotpants? Figured you'd have made a million prissy friends by now."

"Clearly you fancy yourself a good judge of prissiness, but you can't tell the difference between its varieties. I am nothing like the girls here," says Azula, wrinkling her nose.

"So... you came to me because you're a social pariah," Toph surmises.

"I am not," Azula replies, but she can't think of a decent alternative reason. Associating with Toph certainly doesn't gain her anything in terms of status; her gravitation towards the girl is illogical and remains a mystery.

"Are you gonna sit down, or what?"

"I will not sit in the grass."

"Geez, Princess, just—alright, wait a second." Toph puts down her noodle box and begins tugging at her oversized school sweater. She pulls it all the way up over her head, ruffling her hair in a way that makes Azula cringe but which Toph seems to take no notice of. She lays the sweater down on the grass next to her and signals for Azula to sit, as though the small barrier provided by a garment of clothing could save her from the indignity of sitting on the muddy oval.

"No wonder you don't have any friends," Toph mumbles.

"You say that as though it's everyone else who's decided not to befriend me, and not the other way around."

"And yet you're here talking to me right now, even if you won't sit the hell down," Toph picks up her noodles again and begins to eat, although it doesn't stop her from talking.

"It's true, I can hardly believe my most thorough acquaintance in this place so far is a blind child with very poor hygiene."

"Hey, I'm fifteen. If I'm a child then what are you?"

"Seventeen," Azula replies. God, she's even hanging out with someone two years younger than herself. "I notice you don't dispute my observations about your hygiene."

Toph shrugs, puts her noodles back on the ground and then reaches down to her feet, unlacing her shoes, pulling them off, stripping away her socks and then burying her bare feet in the dirt, toes wriggling.

"Nope," she says, grinning at Azula, who turns her nose up and tries to forget what she's seen.

"You are disgusting."

"And yet here you are."

"God only knows _why_."

Toph is nothing like anyone Azula has voluntarily associated with before. She is crass and immature and lacks the very sense required to perceive Azula's perfect outward construction of herself. Azula knows that there is far more to her than her beauty, but it still makes her vaguely uneasy that she would be quickly accepted on the basis of something else when she has put so little else on display.  

 

*

 

"You look happier than you did this morning," Mother observes with a note of surprise as Azula climbs into the car. She leaves the front passenger side empty and takes the back seat, as though Mother is the driver they can't afford to employ anymore.  

"I grew tired of expressing my scorn. My complexion would have suffered."

Azula catches Mother smiling at her in the rear view mirror and rolls her eyes.

 

*

 

Azula doesn't meet anyone else of any interest in her classes. Most of the girls are engrossed in their cliques, and look at her as though she has some kind of strange deformity of the face. An unfortunate side effect of her particular fame. Azula looks back at them, with their expensive but tasteless false fingernails and tans, and feels no sadness at missing out on their company. They are from the kinds of families who have money but lack the dignity associated with real class. Azula may lack some of that money now, but she will always carry herself with more grace than these people.

And then there is Toph, who is so proud of her utter lack of grace. In its way, her uncouthness is more desirable than the wannabes' mangled imitations of poise. Toph is herself, and that is something to be respected in this world. She also shares Azula's critical view of their school environment, which helps.

"Well, look who came crawling back," Toph smirks when Azula approaches her on the oval again at recess.

"Hardly," she says, but waits patiently as Toph removes her jacket and lays it out for her as she had done with her sweater the previous day.

"Your Highness," Toph mocks as Azula positions herself carefully on top of the garment.

They eat in silence for a while, with the exception of Toph's not-so-modest noodle-slurping.

"So do you miss your old friends, Princess?" Toph asks when her food is finished.

Ty Lee and Mai's faces spring to Azula's mind. She shoos them away. Moving schools had not been the only reason she'd lost the two people she would have called friends.

"I suppose so," she tells Toph, keen to gloss over the topic.

Toph must sense as much, because she pushes. "What about that girlfriend you had? Ty Whatsername?"

"You seem to know more about me today than you did yesterday," Azula says suspiciously.

"I was talking to my mother last night. She's really into all the gossip rags. Was happy, though very confused, that I'd taken a sudden interest in them too."

"So you went home and stalked me via my media appearances."

"Yup. Turns out you're almost not a boring person."

"Almost?"

"Take the compliment, Hotpants."

"You're very hung up on the hotpants issue for someone who has no ability to see the pictures."

"What can I say? I have a very vivid, tactile imagination."

Somehow, steering the conversation back to Toph's original question has become the more attractive option.

"Her name was Ty Lee," she explains. "And she left school to join the circus."

"That part was _true_?" Toph laughs. "Oh man, rich kids. The _circus_?"

Azula is oddly ruffled. She herself has criticised Ty Lee's choice, but it's uncomfortable when others do the same. Others do not know Ty Lee like Azula knows her. Or knew her, at least.

"She always excelled at gymnastics," she says defensively.

"Flexible, huh?" Toph rolls the words around filthily on her tongue. "I bet that was fun."

"Jealous?"

"A bit," Toph admits easily. "Not of you, though."

Azula is taken aback by the suddenness and bluntness of the flirtation. Even when Toph is being suggestive she is the furthest thing from coy, doesn't dance around the implication.

"Are you—"

"Hitting on you? So what if I am?"

"What makes you think I would want to go out with someone like you?"

"What, someone blind?" Toph is full of that faux innocence again, the kind she deploys in front of her parents.

"Don't—" Azula begins, but Toph cuts her off.

"I'm just messing with you, Princess. But really, when did I ever say I wanted to _date_ you?"

Azula reflects on this conversation later. She feels strangely about it, and isn't sure why. Toph is hardly the kind of person she would date, or... be intimate with in any capacity. Ty Lee, adoring of Azula and adored by everyone else, was the perfect date for her to parade around in front of the relevant adults and cameras when she was coming out. Toph is even less appropriate than the least suitable person Azula could have imagined.

And yet she wonders against her will what the hair falling over Toph's big pale eyes would feel like between her fingers.  

 

*

 

"Hey, Princess," Toph says, catching Azula as she walks from class to their usual lunch spot. "Wanna come to a party on Saturday?"

"A party?" Azula asks. "Whose is it?"

"Friend of mine's twentieth. He always gets the best food, it'll be fun. I reckon you could use some of that."

"You have friends?" Azula asks. Sure, she's only known Toph for a week, but she certainly hasn't seen any indication that the girl hangs out with anyone else.

"'Course I have friends," Toph says. "I'm awesome. Who _wouldn't_ wanna be friends with me?"

"Yes, you have to fend off admirers at every turn," Azula says dryly.

"Look at the two of us—just popular kids being popular," Toph gestures around them at the schoolyard that she cannot see, but doesn't _have_ to see to know that it isn't filled with their loving fans.

They sit down on the grass as usual. Azula can hardly believe that she has settled into a routine that involves seating herself on (mostly) bare earth. Still, Toph always offers her whatever outer garment she has with her—either her jumper or her jacket—to sit on. Azula never has to ask. Each day she wonders whether Toph will have tired of making the concession; whether she'll have decided that it's time Azula deals with sitting on the ground like Toph's unhygienic conception of a 'normal person'. But that day has not come yet. Toph is impatient a lot of the time, but she is also enduring of certain small things. She seems to know just which details make the difference between Azula hanging on and losing grip, without Azula ever having to explain that she might just fall apart if anything else in her life breaks.

"Thank you," Azula says one day as Toph lays her jacket down, in a fit of uncharacteristic gratefulness.

Toph looks unseeingly at her for a long moment, then says, "That was weird."

Azula agrees, unsure of what came over her, and they move on without speaking about it again.

 

*

 

"I'm going to a party tomorrow, by the way," Azula informs her mother as she's driven to school on Friday morning.

"That's great, honey!" comes the sickeningly sweet reply. "I'm so glad you're making friends."

Azula doesn't clarify that actually, she only has one friend, and the party is a perfect stranger's. She says instead,

"I'll be needing to borrow some money so that I can buy drugs and hire strippers."

Mother is less happy after this jab.

"Or can we not afford that, either?" Azula continues. "Did Dad already spend all our money on drugs and strippers?"

Mother pulls up in the side street near the gate. "Have a good day, Azula."

Azula slams the car door and doesn't look back.

She's still in a foul mood when she encounters Toph.

"Geez, who pissed in your coffee this morning, Princess?"

"I don't drink coffee," Azula retorts.

"Not my point. Anyway, I guess if I were you then I'd always be pretty mad. I mean, having to see _that_ in the mirror every day? That's a rough life."

Azula sighs. If all her frustration were fire inside her then she's be huffing out smoke—but as is, there's just a small curl of steam in the frigid air.

"How do you deal with your infuriating parents?" she asks Toph. Toph doesn't talk about her family a lot, besides making it clear that they don't understand her, who she really is, and what she is and isn't capable of.

Azula doesn't know what response she expects, but it isn't,

"Wrestling."

She stops in her tracks, almost causing a pile up of students behind her.

"What on _earth_ do you mean?"

Toph grins. "Well, Hotpants, it's funny that you chose to put it that way. Ever heard of a little thing called the 'Earth Rumble'?"

The name is vaguely familiar to Azula, but she doesn't have any real knowledge to match up with it.

"Earth Rumble is underground wrestling. When my parents are being especially annoying, I sneak out to Earth Rumble and scream as loud as I need to while the dudes in the ring end up beating each other up."

Azula isn't sure what to say to that. "You must be joking," she says. "That's possibly the worst idea I've ever heard." But even as she says it, Azula realises that venting frustration by watching illegal wrestling tournaments is hardly as different from her martial arts classes as she would like to think it is. Yes, her dojo is far from some underground arena—but at the heart of it, the similarity is there.

"You asked," Toph shrugs. "Hey, maybe you should compete in an Earth Rumble sometime. Someone could smack the stick outta your ass. Or, well, I could do that, but—"

"They could try," Azula says. "But they'd fail."

"Ooh," Toph's interest is suddenly doubled. "You're full of surprises, Princess. Hey, your wrestler name could be Hotpants. And then your costume could also be—"

Azula smacks Toph on the side of the head and then insists on picking up their walking pace. She will not be late and mar her perfect record, even if that record is being kept by an inferior institution.

 

*

 

"I told my parents about you," Toph tells Azula at lunch.

"What exactly did you tell them?" Azula is sceptical.

"Well, first they were thrilled that I have a friend. The kind of nice girl who'd help a poor blind kid get to her classes, keep her company at lunchtimes, and so on. Then I told them who you were. Now Dad is all concerned that you'll be a terrible influence—even though I told him you're completely obsessive about getting to class on time and doing all your homework—and Ma is trying to mirror his concern while secretly milking me for information to supplement the mental tabloid file she keeps on you."

"Well, it sounds like things could have gone worse."

"I've been told never to speak to you again."

"And I can see you're obeying those instructions to the letter."

"I live on the wild side."

"I'm beginning to think you've only befriended me so that you can be rebellious."

Toph laughs. "Don't be crazy, now, Princess. I felt your tits three times on the first day we met. I didn't _only_ befriend you to be a rebel. Speaking of which, it's been a while. It's hard for a girl who can't see. Maybe I could refresh my memory—"

They're interrupted by Toph's phone ringing. Her backpack is closer to Azula, so she reaches for it.

"Who's calling?" Toph asks.

The caller I.D. reads... "Boomerang Guy?"

"Oh, sweet, pass it here Hotpants." Toph holds the phone to her ear. "Sokka!" she greets the caller jovially. "What? Oh, that's cool. Yep. Well _obviously_. Ten minutes, yeah. Fine! Bye."

"Who was that?" Azula asks.

"That was the guy whose party we're going to tomorrow. You're gonna get to meet him in advance! Also, I hope you like pizza with lots and lots of meat on it."

Ten minutes pass, and then Toph abruptly stands, ordering Azula to follow.

"Why?"

"Because yummy food, that's why."

Toph leads her over to the edge of the school, where a fence separates the oval from the block next door.

"Are you quite sure you're going in the right direction?" she asks.

"We're almost at the Principal's office now, right?" Toph asks sarcastically. "Of course I'm sure."

She stops when her cane brushes the bushes that line the chain link fence. Then, to Azula's dismay, she moves along the garden until she finds a small opening in the densest section, then pushes through the leafy little branches.

"Come on, Hotpants," she says, pulling on Azula's hand. Azula tries to shake her grip before she can be dragged into the bushes.  

"Perhaps it would help if you explained to me why we're hiding in the garden."

"I told you—because of pizza!"

"I'm sure that reasoning makes sense in _your_ head, but—"

"Okay, Princess, it's like this: once upon a time, there was a big hole in this fence. People—mainly boys from the school just down the street—used to use it to sneak in and out."

"Hey Toph!" Azula is startled when a voice calls out from deeper inside the garden, presumably behind the fence.

"Sokka! I'm coming. Just trying to convince Princess Hotpants to come in. She doesn't like dirt."

"To be fair, nobody likes dirt as much as you do, Toph," Sokka's voice replies.

"I think I may be willing to like you, Boomerang Guy," says Azula, glad for an ally.

"I like you too, Princess Hotpants," he replies, and the gladness dissolves instantly at his awkwardly suggestive tone.

"Call me that again and I'll relieve you of a vital body part," she says, as sweetly as ever.

"Anyway," Toph continues her story, "a couple of guys got really stoned, came in through the fence and went around singing about a 'secret tunnel', so they found the hole and mostly closed it up."

" _Fuck_ those guys," Sokka says emphatically. "Their song was the worst!"

"Hey, it was at least kind of funny. They sang their song to the principal. They even tried to give her a flower crown. Then they hit the security guy in the nuts with a ukelele."

Satisfied with the explanation, Azula follows Toph between the bushes. Twigs and leaves brush against her, which she doesn't enjoy, but privacy of the small hollow carved in the back of the garden and the wafting smell of hot pizzas are enough to compensate. Toph's friend Sokka tells terrible jokes, but he doesn't try to flirt with Azula again, nor does he question her as Toph's friend. It seems that her judgment is good enough for him. Sokka is dressed in a uniform that suggests delivering pizzas is his job, but he stays around and eats as much of the delivery as Toph does—and both prove to be competitive eaters.

"So," he says to Toph when the pizzas are gone and the bell is calling them back to classes. "I'll see you tomorrow night, right?"

"You'll see me, too," Azula adds.

"Yep. I'm bringing a date," Toph says, and leans into Azula, throwing an arm around her shoulder.

"And here I thought you were only interested in casual sex," Azula deadpans.

Sokka looks on with wide eyes, opening his mouth and then closing it again. Toph bursts out laughing, obviously reading his shock in the silence. Azula doesn't laugh herself, but a smile spreads across her lips in her amusement.

 

*

 

It was wishful thinking, obviously, to expect that everyone at Sokka's party would be as accepting of Azula's presence there as Sokka himself.

She stands outside the house Sokka and his sister share with several other housemates, and listens to the voices arguing inside. Toph's is strident and furious, but Katara's is shrill and extremely insistent. Loud as they are, though, it's difficult to make out the actual words they're saying from out here. Azula can guess at Katara's comments easily enough. It's more Toph's defence of her that she's curious to hear.

But Toph had asked her to go and wait outside while she sorted things out, so here Azula is. The night is chilly enough that her breath is cloudy in front of her, but not so cold that her hands aren't still comfortably warm in the pockets of her blazer.

The night had not begun so badly;

"Hey everyone," Toph has said, barging into the room where people had begun to gather. "I'm here, so the fun can begin now. Also, this is my friend. You can call her Princess Hotpants."

"You may not."

"Don't listen to her—Princess Hotpants is totally her real name."

Azula had fixed everyone whose eyes dared meet hers with a threatening look, but made sure to throw an amused glance at Toph to tone down the menace of the expression.

There was, as promised, a table well-stocked with food. There was a peculiar combination of store-bought junk food and dishes that looked very home-cooked. Azula helped herself to some of the latter options while Sokka guided Toph through the whole array of options, and she took generous samples of everything, scarfing them down while she chatted with Sokka, who was also forming words around chunks of meat as he chewed them. Azula took civilised mouthfuls of her meal and added to their conversation occasionally, when she thought of something relevant to say. It was far from the most uncomfortable social situation she had endured. She found it easy to laugh along with their rude jokes and awful puns.

Things had begun to go wrong when Toph—thankfully without food in her hands—tripped over absolutely nothing and conveniently landed hands-first against Azula's chest. Again.

"There's a limit to the number of times that trick will work, you know," Azula had said, using her proximity to Toph to push her bodily towards the wall. Toph removed the offending hands in order to steady herself against the surface at her back. Then she wriggled away from Azula, trying to switch their positioning until Azula leaned in to hold her in place with the full force of her weight.

"I knew you were into me, Hotpants," Toph had breathed, her mouth very close to Azula's ear.

Azula had lifted Toph's chin gently with a single finger, almost the way she'd done when she was about to kiss Ty Lee. Part of her was tempted simply to complete the motion, to swoop down and push her lips against Toph's. It would have been easy enough, although the time and place were not ideal. She felt the moment of irregularity in Toph's breath and used the tiny lapse in focus to wrap her hands around Toph's wrists like cuffs.

"Hey, that's not fair!" Toph protested. "Let me go, Azula, you bitch."

It hadn't been any different to their usual antagonism, despite being notably more physical in nature, but the other party guests hadn't been familiar with the kind of relationship Toph and Azula had.

"Let go of her _right now_ ," Katara had ordered, voice as hard and cold as ice, edged with the threats of a mother dragon. "And then get out of my house."

"Hey, woah," Sokka had leapt in, at the same time as Toph had said, "Katara, don't—" but the damage had already been done.

" _Azula_ ," Katara repeated the name Toph had called out. "I thought you looked familiar. You're Ozai's daughter! My family almost lost everything because of what your father did. I can't believe you'd actually waltz in here like this—"

"Listen here Sugar Queen," Toph had interrupted, louder and more stubborn now that she had found her feet properly again. The way she said Katara's nickname was a fascinating thing to hear; the moniker itself seemed like it could be a compliment, and yet this was clearly not the intention. "You're always at me about not being social enough, not bothering to try and make friends or get along with people. Well, I made a friend, and now you're treating her like crap."

"But she's _not_ a friend. Her whole family are just _horrible_ —"

"And I'm exactly the person my parents want me to be, because that's _exactly_ how family works." It was like something snapped in Toph at that point.

"She attacked you!"

"If anyone attacked anyone, it was me," Toph insists. "It was just a bit of fun. F-u-n, Katara. I can understand if you don't know what that is." She'd turned to Azula at that point, and said, "Wait for me outside. I'll be finished here soon."

An apologetic Sokka had accompanied her. He is now milling around on the sidewalk with her, although he's dressed in little more than a singlet top.

"You should go back inside," Azula tells him. "Keep warm. It's your birthday celebration, after all. I wouldn't want to ruin it any more than I have already."

Sokka shrugs, but the look he fixes her with is not one of casual indifference. "You didn't ruin anything, okay?" he assures her. "Katara's... well, she's..."

"Protective," Azula finishes.

"Yeah. That, and a lot of other things," he agrees. "Sometimes it's a great thing. Sometimes... not so much. I appreciate that she's always looking out for me—and the rest of us, Toph included, even though they butt heads—but with that comes the occasional overreaction." He points back at the house. "Exhibit A."

"Perhaps she's right, though," Azula says, some of her sense clearly having been numbed by the cold.

"I'm not saying I know you well," Sokka shakes his head, "and maybe I'm just not a good judge of character, but Toph is, and she likes you, so I'm inclined to trust her. And you like her, so I'm inclined to trust you. I mean, you laugh at my jokes. You laugh at _Toph's_ jokes. That makes you at least a little bit considerate, at least a little bit empathetic."

Azula answers with silence. She doesn't know what to do with a display of faith like this. People do not trust her as easily as this; with her family name comes a debt of dishonesty to pay off before she even gets a chance to be nice or nasty in her own right. Katara's response makes more sense to her than this.

"Don't hurt her, though," Sokka warns. "I mean, not that she won't roast you herself if you do, but... I still need to look out for my best friends."

"Toph deserves good things," says Azula. It sounds almost like a declaration she has made about herself many times over, except that she finds this version easier to believe.

"Yeah, she does."

 

*

 

Azula thinks about that moment—when she had Toph up against the wall, a line of potential strung between their lips, unfulfilled but not unnoticed. She thinks about what it might have been like if she'd allowed that line to guide her, to pull their mouths together like magnets. There are a great many reasons why it would have been a bad idea, and why it still is—but none of those reasons tug at her like gravity, like inevitability.

Then the knowledge of what it feels like to be alienated from friends and family claws its way up from where it sleeps in the depths of her gut, and she imagines Toph's father abandoning her for his own greed, leaving nothing but a legacy of shame and humiliation. Toph's friends, leaving her in favour of impulsive circus dreams or replacing her with her own siblings. Just a few nights ago, Azula had caught Mai sneaking out of Zuko's room. She'd barely even said hello.

It's very strange, the way her mind is advocating not for Azula but for someone else entirely. _A little bit empathetic_ , Sokka had said. Azula would have said he was wrong, before now, but if she can't remove this malignant growth of a conscience then perhaps she will be forever doomed to selflessness and caring. This is the last thing she needs right now.

 

*

 

She'll make it surgical. She will speak with Toph and then go to some far-flung corner of the school and find herself a new place to sit—somewhere with an actual seat, and no social entanglements to add to her problems. It will be as simple as that.

She doesn't have to school the grimace off her face as she reaches Toph, which makes it somewhat easier—but apparently visual cues are not the only giveaway.

"Whatever dumb thing you're gonna say, don't bother, Azula," says Toph, who's pulling her sweater out of her backpack and laying it out as usual. "Don't go creating some kind of crisis here. Just sit the fuck down, okay?"

"But I—"

" _Sit_." Toph is both commanding and pleading, and Azula is suddenly very tired. Tired of holding herself up and far too tired to wield the scalpel in the kind of surgery she had planned to carry out. She sits, hears Toph breathe a small sigh of relief, and breathes one herself.

"See, Hotpants, that was easy," Toph says, unpacking her noodles.

The clawing in Azula's gut has disappeared, settled down once more like perhaps this is what it actually wanted from her to begin with.

 

*

 

"Hey Hotpants," says Toph, shuffling her feet in the grass of the oval as if she's actually _nervous_. "Will you— can I ask if you'll—"

"Just spit it out."

"Will you go to prom with me?" Toph says all at once, like a child confessing to having broken a precious toy.

"What?" Azula says, a little more loudly that she means to. "Are you being serious?"

Toph's face breaks all at once, like a dam finally giving way. She cackles, loud and maniacal, uncaring of the spectacle she is to anyone within earshot. Toph laughs entirely for herself. Azula almost admires it. "Ha! You should have seen your face, Hotpants!"

" _You_ didn't see my face."

"Sure, but I imagined it. And it was _beautiful_."

It's clearly not what Toph means, but Azula says, "I quite agree. My face always is."

"Typical. Anyway, there's an Earth Rumble going down on the night of prom I was gonna go to. I guess you could come with me, if you wanted to."

"Wrestling?" Azula asks, incredulous. She's heard Toph talk about the Earth Rumbles, but she's never thought that she might actually want to go to one herself. "That sounds like a horrible idea."

Toph grins. "Alright then," she says, "it's a date."

Azula opens her mouth to protest that it is absolutely not a date, but the words are so slow in coming that Toph is already smirking at her silence like it's acquiescence. It isn't, Azula doesn't think—but it also isn't _not_. It's like the path of that kiss that didn't happen. Magnetic, probably inevitable, and surprisingly unobjectionable.

It feels like the right place to be.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/) as henrymercury so come say hey :)


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